Testing an organizational innovativeness integrative model across cultures

Most previous within-discipline research on innovativeness as an organizational trait does not account for cross-disciplinary perspectives, leading to incomplete findings. This paper develops an integrative model of organizational innovativeness, based on research in several disciplines to identify antecedents to, characteristics of, and outcomes of organizational innovativeness. Cross-sectional, questionnaire-based data from Israeli, Lithuanian, and Slovakian public organizations were used to test the model. Market and learning orientation enhanced organizational innovativeness, whereas internal politics and centralization reduced it. Organizational innovativeness enhanced two individual-level outcomes (satisfaction and commitment), as well as innovation performance, which, in turn, improved overall organizational performance.     

Organizational context, climate and innovativeness: adoption of imaging technology

Managers make decisions to adopt technological innovations within an organizational context. This research explores the role of organizational climate as it affects the impacts of organizational context on innovativeness. Context refers here to organizational size, slack resources, and organizational age. We analyze three known climate dimensions as moderator variables: risk orientation, external orientation, and achievement orientation. Data describe the adoption of medical imaging technologies by 70 hospitals. Climate measures come from several technology decision-makers within each organization. Technology measures of radicalness and relative advantage are ratings by five outside experts in the use of these 68 technologies. The study also includes the traditional measure that counts the overall number of innovations adopted. Innovativeness is a multi-dimensional composite variable composed of radicalness, relative advantage, and number of innovations adopted. As expected, results show that organizational size and slack are positively related with innovativeness. Hierarchical regression analyses indicate that the climate measures of risk orientation and external orientation interact significantly with the context dimensions of organizational size and organizational age. The model developed and tested in this project explains over 50% of the total variance in innovativeness.     

Innovativeness as an Unintended Outcome of Franchising: Insights from Restaurant Chains

A growing trend in improving innovation outcomes is to go outside the firm's boundaries. One mechanism by which firms extend organizational boundaries is through franchising their channels. Yet, the effects of franchising on innovation outcomes have been overlooked in the literature. We propose that a firm's emphasis on franchising will affect its organizational innovativeness, conceptualized as product and process innovativeness, independently and with other firm characteristics—franchising experience, firm size, financial leverage, and slack resources. We find support for our hypotheses using a nonlinear seemingly unrelated regression model estimated using panel data from 38 U.S. restaurant chains between 1992 and 2005. The positive effect of the emphasis on franchising on product innovativeness is stronger for firms with high financial leverage, but weaker for firms with high slack resources. For process innovativeness, the effect is stronger for firms with high financial leverage but weaker for large firms, and for firms with high franchising experience and high slack resources. The findings indicate that a firm's emphasis on franchising has contingent effects on product and process innovation outcomes. Thus, franchising emerges as a competing mechanism (to alliances and joint ventures) that extends organizational boundaries and affects organizational innovativeness.     

Organizational innovativeness: Exploring the relationship between organizational determinants of innovation, types of innovations, and measures of organizational performance

This research study examines the relationships between innovativeness of firms, their organizational characteristics, and organizational performance. Previous studies that have examined these relationships have yielded conflicting results. A fundamental assumption of this research is that these conflicting results may be due to a narrow definition of the construct of innovativeness. This research demonstrates that by using a multidimensional measure of innovativeness, the reasons for the conflicting findings of past research becomes evident. The results of this study show that substantive relationships do exist between organizational factors, organizational innovativeness, and organizational performance. These relationships, however, are complex, and can only be detected if innovativeness is measured as a multidimensional construct. Each of the organizational factors examined in this study showed significantly different effects on each dimension of two types of organizational innovativeness — technical and administrative innovativeness. Further, the results show that innovativeness does improve organizational performance. However, each dimension of the two types of innovativeness affects different aspects of organizational performance.     

Antecedents of Innovativeness in Technology‐Based Services (TBS): Peering into the Black Box of Entrepreneurial Orientation

Innovativeness is the organization's capability for developing and introducing innovations. We argue that new combinations and recombinations of prior and new knowledge (by way of creating, assembling, and transforming knowledge) result in innovativeness in an organization. We further assert that a knowledge‐based focus on innovativeness is particularly important for firms that are technology‐based. The majority of studies focusing on innovativeness are in the entrepreneurship arena, and a large number of studies consider innovativeness as one of three dimensions of the entrepreneurial orientation (EO) construct, the other two dimensions being proactiveness and risk‐taking. However, recent research has suggested peering into the black box of EO by disaggregating the EO construct and examining the interrelationships among its three components. Hence, using the knowledge‐based view and drawing from multiple disciplines, our study conceptualizes innovativeness as a criterion variable and investigates the antecedent role of proactiveness and risk‐taking propensity on innovativeness in the context of technology‐based services (TBS). We hypothesize that both proactiveness and risk‐taking propensity exhibit a curvilinear relationship with innovativeness and introduce organizational structure formality as a moderator to further explicate these relationships. Our results show that proactiveness has a curvilinear (inverted U relationship) with innovativeness, and that this relationship is attenuated by organizational structure formality. Additional analysis indicates that in TBS firms, risk‐taking propensity has a positive linear relationship with innovativeness, and this relationship is accentuated by organizational structure formality. Finally, we discuss important conceptual and practical implications of our study and provide suggestions for future research.     

The complementarity of internal integration and product modularity: An empirical study of their interaction effect on competitive capabilities

Modular product design and internal integration are commonly adopted by manufacturers to improve operational performance. A number of studies argue that the adoption of product modularity significantly alters organization design, which affects the impact of internal integration on competitive capabilities. This paper thus aims to empirically explore the individual effects as well as interaction effects of product modularity and internal integration on competitive capabilities. The competitive capabilities studied in this paper include product innovativeness, low price, product quality, delivery, flexibility and customer services. After analysing the data from 251 Hong Kong manufacturers through moderated multiple regression analysis, the study found that better internal integration can significantly improve product innovativeness, product quality, delivery, flexibility and customer services, while a high level of product modularity enhances product innovativeness, flexibility and customer services. More importantly, the study shows that internal integration and product modularity can interact to improve product innovativeness and product quality. These results enhance our understanding of the interaction of product design and organizational coordination.     

个体企业家导向视角的管理创新引进机理研究

为揭示作为组织创新与变革直接负责人和承担者的企业核心管理者在引进新管理实践或方法的决策过程中的具体作用机制,揭开管理决策黑箱,尝试从核心管理者个人层面的企业家导向视角出发,在回顾相关文献的基础上,构建企业家导向的3个维度(技术创新性、先动性、风险倾向性)通过创新意愿的中介作用影响管理创新引进水平的研究框架,并对浙江、四川、广东和辽宁等地的237份有效问卷进行四阶段多元回归分析,验证相关假设。研究结果表明,管理者个人层面企业家导向的3个维度均显著影响管理创新引进水平;企业家导向通过创新意愿影响管理创新决策,3个维度之间符合行为理论从态度到意愿到行为的实现过程;创新意愿部分中介企业家导向与管理创新引进水平之间的关系。     

Linking Dynamic Absorptive Capacity and Service Innovation for Born Global Service Firms: An Organization Innovation Lens Perspective

Grounded in the dynamic capabilities approach and organizational sub-system view on internationalization, this quantitative study develops and empirically tests a model of international market performance of born global service firms. While several scholars highlighted innovativeness as a driver of competitiveness for born global firms, the capacities underlying the born global firm's innovativeness have received limited scholarly attention, specifically, dynamic absorptive capacities (exploratory, transformative, and exploitative learning capacities). The uniqueness of this paper posits that dynamic absorptive capacities in a born global service firm have contributed to innovation and resulted in international market outcomes. The data was collected using the survey method from born global service firms and was analyzed using structured equation modeling. The findings of this study reveal that service innovation and business strategy are critical drivers of international performance for born global service firms. The paper contributes to the literature on the significance of absorptive capacity in born global service firms by identifying those dynamic absorptive capacities that operate in a composite set of relationships with other capabilities and significantly contribute to their innovation, impacting their internationalization outcomes. This study also supplements the theoretical and practical implications derived from the key findings of this study and provides future research directions.     

Organizational innovativeness and coopetition: a study of video game developers

Collaboration with rivals is viewed as a way to achieve superior performance of firms in terms of innovation output. Yet empirical results show that coopetition may either foster, hamper or be neutral to innovation. The motivation of our study resides in firms’ heterogeneity in terms of their innovative capacity, that is innovativeness, in order to better understand the complex relationship between coopetition and innovation. We explore the interdependency between organizational innovativeness and coopetition. Our study has been conducted in the Polish video game industry. The data has been collected through a survey administered to all 506 identified Polish video game developers, with an effective sample of 84 coopetitors. We run correlation and regression analyses in a multidimensional approach to organizational innovativeness and coopetition. Our findings show that coopetition is a popular strategy for video game developers, and is adopted by 68% of firms. Organizational innovativeness and its particular dimensions are positively and significantly related to both direct and indirect coopetition. Based on factor analysis we find its three components to be reliable: openness and encouragement to innovate; strategic innovative focus; and extrinsic monetary motivation. While extrinsic monetary motivation does not play a role in coopetition of video game developers, openness and encouragement to innovate stimulates especially indirect coopetition, while strategic innovative focus affects especially direct coopetition.     

出口企业竞争战略对产品创新的影响:以市场导向为中介变量

本研究基于220家中国制造型出口企业的数据,探讨了两种竞争战略(差异化战略和成本领先战略)如何通过顾客导向和竞争者导向影响企业创新倾向和新产品绩效。研究结果显示:(1)差异化战略通过促进顾客导向和竞争者导向间接改善创新倾向和新产品绩效;(2)成本领先战略直接正向影响创新倾向进而改善新产品绩效;(3)差异化战略对出口企业产品创新的影响更为显著。研究为中国制造型出口企业如何改善竞争战略执行、提高产品创新绩效提出了管理上的启示意义。     

基于知识创新的企业成长内在机理模型研究

知识创新推动组织演化与变革。根据知识创新来源,推动企业成长不外乎存在两种动力:一是组织内部知识的推动力;二是组织外部知识驱动力。企业成长是一个开放的知识创新系统行为,本文首先运用组织知识演化模型分析了企业成长的非线性特征和影响机制;在此基础上,构建系统模型探索了知识创新背景下的企业成长内在机理,并借助于组织学习和知识共享,运用算例进行了分析和验证。     

消费者创新性、消费者特性与新产品采用行为关系的实证研究

通过对重庆市主城区消费者的实地调查,用结构方程模型和回归分析检验消费者创新性、消费者特性以及新产品采用行为的关系。结果发现消费者创新性比消费者特性能更好的预测新产品采用行为,且消费者家庭月收入和受教育程度是消费者创新性和新产品采用行为的调节变量。     

Linking organizational context with structure: a preliminary investigation of the information processing view

Although the effects of many environmental and contextual variables on organizational structure have been studied extensively, the relationships of these variables among themselves and with organizational structure remain largely inconclusive. Based on the information-processing (IP) view of organization, this study builds and tests an integrated model to investigate the factors that are likely to be associated with an organization's information intensity. The model includes two organizational contextual variables: competitive pressure and organizational innovativeness, two IP-related variables: information intensity and information technology (IT) importance, and two dimensions of organizational structure: centralization and formalization. Based on data collected in Taiwan, the results show the significant role of information intensity in mediating the effects of competitive pressure and innovativeness on IT importance and structures, thus lending strong support to the IP view of organization.     

Career orientations and career success among research,and development and engineering professionals

Managing the careers of research, development and engineering (RD&E) professionals is important to the strategic use of RD&E in the economy. Appropriate mechanisms for motivating RD&E professionals will probably emerge as a critical success factor for organizations that want to compete in world markets. This study examines dimensions and levels of career orientation and their correlations with individual and work-related outcome variables among 78 RD&E professionals. The findings reveal a rich diversity of career orientation in RD&E professionals. The data strongly suggest that RD&E professionals are service, lifestyle and security oriented. However, they scored low on technical orientation and entrepreneurship. This paper suggests that the dual career ladder is not an effective device for managing RD&E professionals. Organizations must be careful to provide career paths that retain and motivate workers and, more importantly, find matches between organizational needs and individuals' needs, and restructure jobs accordingly. The authors offer suggestions for future research and identify implications for management.     

顾客导向和创新导向对企业绩效的影响机制研究

在市场导向相关研究的基础上.本文探索了顾客导向(Customer Orientation)以及创新导向(Innovation Orientation)经由组织学习(Organizational Learning)对公司绩效(Firm Performance)的影响.通过对欧洲的390家制造企业的调查.发现顾客导向和创新导向都对组织学习产生正向影响,组织学习提高了公司的新产品绩效(New Product Performance).最终提升了公司绩效.最后,文章讨论了本研究的理论和实践意义,以及未来的研究方向.     

Drivers and Performance Outcomes of Innovativeness: An Empirical Study

The issue of innovativeness within organizations has attracted considerable attention in the literature. However, limited knowledge exists about the drivers of and their simultaneous effects on innovativeness and the role of innovativeness in enhancing performance. We adopt the resource‐based view (RBV) of the firm and insights from the literature on capabilities to investigate specific capability types serving as antecedents to innovativeness and to examine its performance outcomes. From a sample of 218 Greek manufacturers, the results indicate that managerial, entrepreneurial and technical capabilities facilitate the establishment of innovativeness, which in turn enhances business performance. The study lends support to prior research that highlights the importance of innovativeness in enhancing organizational performance and sharpens understanding of the drivers of innovativeness and the way they collectively operate through innovativeness to boost performance. The study further provides new insights into the role of innovativeness from the perspective of the RBV, while highlighting certain firm capabilities that might both enable and impede competitive advantage and superior performance creation. As such, this study contributes to the effective management of the innovativeness process within organizations.     

Equity Crowdfunding: The Influence of Perceived Innovativeness on Campaign Success

This paper examines the impact of perceived innovativeness on the success of equity crowdfunding campaigns. Building on the investor perspective, we hypothesize a positive impact of perceived innovativeness on the campaign outcome. Our database covers 191 campaigns launched in France on different platforms, drawing on over 2,000 individual assessments of the perceived innovativeness of the start-ups involved, carried out by 176 participants with diverse backgrounds. We find support for our hypothesis from the investor perspective in that highly innovative projects attract more crowd investors and, in turn, raise more capital. We contribute to the understanding of how the crowd makes investment choices.     

旅游企业员工服务导向意识的前置因素与后果研究

作者在27个宾馆、餐馆、旅行社进行了一次实证研究,探讨服务导向概念的组成成分与员工服务导向的影响因素和作用。数据分析结果表明,营销导向、情感密集和负责精神是服务导向概念的组成成分,企业的支持、员工的心理受权和工作满意感都是影响员工的服务导向的重要因素,员工的服务导向意识对员工工作行为和旅游企业的外部效率有直接或间接的影响。     

The Role of Existing Knowledge in New Product Innovativeness and Performance

The purpose of this study is to provide a more thorough assessment of the link between existing knowledge and organizational performance than currently exists in the literature. We identify factors and processes influential in the management of existing knowledge within the areas of learning culture, knowledge building, and organizational performance. Through structural equation modeling, a more thorough examination is given of the role existing knowledge plays in new product performance and innovativeness. In completing this task, we provide insight into the subprocesses of knowledge building by evaluating the influence of shared interpretation and two aspects of information acquisition—efficiency and degree of innovativeness of newly acquired information—on new product development (NPD) outcomes. Included in the examination of these processes are organizational culture and structure characteristics believed to influence knowledge management success.